What makes an agile game great? The right mix of accurate—staying true to the principles and practices it teaches—and engaging—giving students a reason to care about the outcome so they'll play (and learn) from the heart! This is especially important when teaching or learning Kanban, which requires deep understanding in order to bring about real change and measurable results.

In this session, we'll take a deep dive into one specific tried-and-tested great agile game. Using the open-source getKanban Version 2.0, we'll step through its game mechanics and review, in some detail, how each design decision helps to illustrate the fundamentals of Kanban. Along the way, we'll review a few key Lean principles and show how the game enlivens those lessons. When we're finished, you'll be ready to download the free getKanban game kit and play by yourself, or with your team, or even run your own big getKanban session with multiple play teams!

Our first half covers the basics of getKanban Version 2.0 for new players, plus a review of limiting WIP, creating a pull system, and working in cross-functional teams. Experienced Kanban trainers and coaches can also learn some new techniques for facilitating the game.

In our second half, I'll show you the adjustments I've made to getKanban Version 2.0 to guide players to their "a-ha" moment—a deep, personal experience they feel and remember. Now, instead of just the basics of how a Kanban board works, my students understand how to detect and solve problems that impede their flow. I see the difference when they leave the game and go back to work. My new open-source hacks to Version 2.0 will help you illuminate Lean principles for your clients and teams, and teach them to achieve real results faster.

Outline/structure of the Session

Part 1: Introduction to getKanban v2.0

Intro/background (10 mins): getKanban in context. I use the game as part of a two-day agile fundamentals course or a one-day Lean/Kanban only course which is designed to reach audiences with a wide range of learning styles:

25% theory and history: why Lean/agile ideas work and how they're interrelated.

25% practice: how to do Scrum and/or how to do Kanban.

50% experiential: hands-on games where students practice what they've just instructed.

We play LEGO Scrum to illustrate Scrum, agile, even a bit of XP.

getKanban is the key activity I use to reinforce Lean principles and Kanban practice.

WORKSHOP (40 mins): I'm going to walk attendees through the actual setup and introduction that I use with my own classes to teach them the initial rules of the game and get them started playing.

We won't have enough time to actually play Day 9 (the first round of gameplay), but I want to make the session experiential for the attendees by getting them hands-on with the game pieces.

Introduction to the game board and pieces (30 mins, illustrated by a lot of pretty slides with graphics and photos); show how each element of the game kit teaches the basics of Kanban:

Lay out the board - states, split doing/done states, and WIP limits - breakout 5-10 mins to discuss WIP limits and how they create a pull system; step through Little's Law

Locate the story cards - story cards represent work items; dots represent effort

Part 2: Advanced Techniques: Hacking getKanban 2.0

Specifically, we want them to learn that limiting WIP reduces overall cycle time

Case study (10 mins): a team we trained in agile totally missed the point about queues and WIP - but when we stumbled upon the right way to show it to them, the turnaround in their behavior was immediate, self-directed, dramatic

Pivot! (1 min): therefore, we realized, it's possible to open teams' eyes about queues and WIP, and the value we get from it is enormous, so how do we realign our training around that?

Basic hacks (20 mins) (illustrated by a lot of pretty slides with graphics and photos):

Scoring/subscribers hack to increase the pain of high cycle time

"To Carlos or not to Carlos?" hack so teams can't rely on resource allocation as a cure for cycle time

Other ways players try to "game the game" and ease the pain of their bottlenecks without really changing their behavior, and various tiny "because I said so" hacks to combat their bad habits

Day 12 lecture hack (20 mins):

Because players cannot take a hint and just need to be thumped on the head with Lean principles sometimes - this is the meat of the workshop

Set up game boards in advance in end-of-Day-9 state, or similar - we won't have time to do any real gameplay, but want them to see and touch and hopefully feel the topics under discussion

Walk through the actual guided discussion of Lean principles that I use during the Day 12 lecture (including pretty slides)

Ellen Grove / Mike Bowler - Everything Is Better When We Stick Together: Building Team Working Agreements

schedule 3 years ago

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60 Mins

Workshop

Beginner

Whether a team is brand-new or seasoned veterans at working together, explicitly defining and/or refining a team working agreement will help the team to align on how they will work together effectively to meet their common goal. In this fast-paced hands-on session, participants will go through the process of building a team working agreement using LEGO Serious Play (LSP).

Creating a team working agreement helps team members set the stage for effective communication and high performance by making assumptions about ‘what really matters to us’ and ‘how we will work together?’ explicit and negotiable. Great working agreements address some difficult topics - what values do we share? how do we want to deal with conflict when it comes up? how will we handle problems within the team? - which are often challenging to discuss openly and honestly, especially when a team is first assembled.

This session will show you how to use LEGO Serious Play to encourage a frank and fearless discussion in order to kickstart these discussions so that a team can quickly create a powerful set of simple guiding principles for working together. Participants will learn about the importance of team working agreements in creating team cohesion and common understanding of shared values and operational guidelines, and experience hands-on how to use the LEGO Serious Play cycle of build-share-reflect to have a participatory discussion to identify shared values, explore reactions to conflict, and build a set of simple guiding principles.

Ellen Grove - Games for Learning about Conflict Resolution

schedule 3 years ago

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90 Mins

Workshop

Beginner

Conflict isn’t inherently a bad thing – it’s inevitable when people are working closely together on things that they care about. In fact, diverging viewpoints can bring new insights to help teams move forward and create something new. Dealing with conflict head-on is challenging for many people, yet few teams spend time explicitly considering “how will we work together when things get rocky?” Teams need to build the skills to be able to navigate through rough times together and come out with win-win solutions.

This workshop will present useful models for considering team conflicts supported by games teams can use to develop and practice conflict resolution skills. The models address underlying drivers of conflict, modes for responding to conflict, assessing conflict severity to determine appropriate interventions, and the patterns of principled negotiation. The games build on the concepts to help participants gain insight and develop important skills in a non-intimidating and memorable way.

Ellen Grove - Lifting off: using play to build a better beginning

schedule 3 years ago

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180 Mins

Workshop

Intermediate

Better teams create better outcomes. A liftoff (as described in the book Liftoff by Diana Larsen and Ainsley Nies) at the outset of a new endeavour helps teams set the stage for betterness by cocreating a shared understanding of purpose, establishing alignment and understanding the context of the work they will do together. While the activities to include in a Lift Off will vary according to team and context, the practice of Agile Chartering - collaboratively developing a lightweight yet effective roadmap for the project and the team - is key to aligning and inspiring people to do better work together.

The purpose of an Agile Chartering workshop is to give all stakeholders of a project a voice and the opportunity to co-create a common understanding of the project dynamics, its purpose and context. It creates co-ownership of the project within the project team and thereby higher commitment to the project goals.

In this workshop, we will explore the objectives of Agile Chartering and foster a playful approach to doing this work. We'll talk about what kinds of games can be used to cocreate Purpose, Alignment and Context with a team, and run at least one game that can be used for each of the elements of an Agile Charter

sasha simone - The Cell Phone Tower Game

schedule 3 years ago

Sold Out!

90 Mins

Workshop

Beginner

A new twist on an old favorite. Using Legos and other building artifacts at hand (log cabin sticks, cardboard, tape, paper, duct-tape etc) teams of 4-5 people must design and build a cell phone tower in 90 minutes using four ten-minute sprints. It begins in the design phase when the product owner selects a specific location in the united states to place the tower (it is important this is a named location) and talks about the overall design and requirements. Once defined, users can select up to 20 items to bring back to their table to build the cell tower. They must use each item during that phase. Unused items must be returned to inventory at the end of the sprint. At the start of each sprint users can go back and select another 20 items for that sprint.

This game teaches the foundational processes of Scrum. Using these techniques, teams learn to self-organize, work in a time-box environment, communicate focused on the sprint goal, plan and organize tasks, estimate quickly and precisely, measure performance and deal with unexpected events. It is suitable for people with all levels of Agile software development experience and affords non-technical people the opportunity to step into the development (construction role) and technical people to try out the non-technical roles (scrum master and product owner). In addition, it simulates the real world experience of dealing with the unexpected, whether it be changes in business requirements or government regulations.

After the second sprint the announcement is made that government regulations have just been formulated so that all new cell towers must now meet standards of architectural design and blend in with the surrounding community. In addition, in order to protect birds of prey such as hawks and bald eagles, you are required to add space for nesting birds which is away from the cell tower so that they won’t nest on the tower itself where they can cause a tower to be unmaintainable during nesting season.